


This Time Around

by Kazatzka



Category: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazatzka/pseuds/Kazatzka
Summary: It always ends the same way. Them, side by side, against an army.





	1. The first time around: Bolivia, 1908

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indigostohelit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/gifts).



Sometimes, Butch wishes he and Sundance could just cut the BS and have an actual honest conversation with each other. To drop their respective masks, which long ceased to have their desired effect on the other man anyway, and really _talk_ to each other. As Harry and Robert, who are mortal men with hopes and dreams and fears and loves.

 

But neither flood nor fire nor Pinkerton posses nor Bolivian armies appear to have shaken either of them out of their funk.

 

  
_But, perhaps,_ Butch ruminates as he watches Sundance reload their guns, _it is the overwhelming fear of what awaits us out there which is keeping us in our roles._

Sundance leans over and gently takes Butch's injured right hand in his own, wrapping a handkerchief around it. Butch has long learned to completely ignore Sundance's harsh tone; the tenderness and care with which Sundance wraps Butch's bad hand tells Butch everything he needs to know.

 

Sundance, who loves no one, loves _him_. He is here, at Butch’s side, in the middle of nowhere, in a country no one’s even heard of, because he loves Butch. 

 

And Sundance is willing to die here, because he loves Butch.

 

They have long joked about going out in a blaze of gunfire and glory, but Butch knows neither of them are stupid enough to believe there is anything truly glorious about a painful death in a strange land.

 

Yet here they are. 

 

They rush from cover, guns blazing.

 

It takes mere moments for them to fall.

 

Butch has done a lot of rotten things in his life, and to a lot of people who deserved a lot better. Butch supposes that it's fitting that he would die here, far from home, shot to pieces by foreigners. He is bleeding out and Sundance has pulled Butch up across his thighs and is holding him, protecting him, calling him a stupid son of a  bitch even while telling him it will be all right, that they'll get to Australia yet... 

 

Butch knows he's dying. That this will be the end of him. That he and Sundance will die here, side by side.

 

But Butch is grateful, so very grateful, for whatever deity has bestowed upon him a kindness he doubts he truly deserves.

 

For Sundance's face, handsome still even through the filth and the blood and the pain, is going to be the very last thing Butch sees.

 

And Butch can't help but be glad of it.

 


	2. The second time around: New York City, 1985

 

Baylon emerged from the womb a charmer. A smooth talker. He could talk his way out of pretty much anything. His favourite teacher at school, Ms Place, always said he could sell ice to the Inuit. So it was a surprise to exactly no one when Baylon fell into a career in public relations and marketing.

 

He was fairly sure his left-leaning family were just relieved he didn’t end up a spin doctor for some overpaid politician.

 

Or an overpaid politician himself.

 

Capitol Hill may have been out of the question, but Baylon picked up his bullshit-spinning expertise and took it to a the tribe who’d practically invented modern PR, and then turned it into an art form: Hollywood.

 

After he rehabilitated the career of an Oscar nominee-turned-drug addict, he was credited as "one to watch" and gets his own office. But he was not one to sit on his laurels. He takes an ageing action star who'd done time in jail for tax evasion and turns him into an Oscar-baiting indie darling. After that, Baylon's called an "overnight success". He gets moved into a bigger office.

 

By the time he's taken a promising young actress known more for her stints in rehab, court appearances, dysfunctional family and (literal) car wrecks, and restored her to something far beyond her former glory, he is heralded a "prodigy" and is given a corner office with a view of Central Park.

 

His boss pulls him into her office. She takes a long draw of her cigarette and stares him down for a long moment.

 

"I think it's time you moved up in the world, Baylon," she drawls.

 

The next day, the file for his newest client lands on his desk at 9:12am sharp.

 

His client's name is emblazoned across the front of the folder; Baylon's eyebrows go up in surprise.

 

SANDRA LOCKWOOD.

 

"An athlete," he mutters to himself. "An _Olympic_ athlete, at that."

 

Lockwood was a woman. She was beautiful. She was a gold medalist. In shooting.

 

She had graduated from Harvard Law School  _magna cum laude_.

 

She was a great philanthropist.

 

So far, so American Dream.

 

But in a recent television interview, she had stated she supported universal healthcare, improved mental health services, a woman's right to choose, and the Second Amendment rights of Americans to bear arms. But that gun control measures are needed.

 

It's a storm in a teacup, but to say she was a divisive figure in middle America and the Bible belt at the moment was putting it mildly.

 

"Hmm," he says.  "Interesting."

 

He'd always liked a challenge.

 

*

 

Sometimes, Baylon wondered if perhaps he'd bitten off more than he could chew with Sandra.

 

She was quiet to the point she could seem aloof, withdrawn, cold. But Baylon knew her better than most. He knew she was more shy than anything else. She enjoyed watching people a lot more than interacting with the majority of them.

 

And, having watched a frightening number of men attempt to inappropriately chat her up in any number of situations, only to be highly offended when she could spar verbally just as well as she could shoot targets, he couldn't say he blamed her.

 

He didn’t know what it was about this woman that drew him in. Sure, she was beautiful. But Baylon liked to think of himself as being a little deeper than that. His relationships with pretty people with no personality never lasted. But if a woman was funny, bright, outgoing? Baylon was in, hook, line and sinker.

 

And Sandra, it turned out, was all of those things.

 

Speaking to the media about her medal wins, speaking to young girls about chasing and achieving their dreams, speaking to lobby and interest groups about gun control and how it worked within the Second Amendment, she came alive.

 

  
_Damnit!_ he cursed himself. _I like her. A lot. More than I should._

 

So he smiled at her. More than usual. He opened doors for her, pulled out chairs for her, offered her his arm or placed a gentle, unobtrusive hand on her lower back to guide her through a crowd.

 

Usually, this worked a treat on woman.

 

Sandra gave him no real response beyond a sharper than usual gaze.

 

He started to wonder if perhaps she preferred women.

 

Then, one night, she pushed him up against her kitchen counter, fire in her eyes.

 

"Is it all right if I kiss you?" she purred.

 

"Sure," Baylon said. He was stunned.

 

But it was the best surprise he'd had in _years_.

 

Baylon had always made it a priority to keep his personal life the hell away from his professional life. He'd seen the results. It was far too...messy.

 

Baylon liked to keep his life as simple - as uncomplicated - as possible.

 

So sleeping with his clients was _definitely_ out of the question.

 

_And yet, here we are..._

 

He lay there, staring at the ceiling, clutching Sandra as tightly as he could without causing her to wake. He couldn't believe it had been a year since she kissed him for the first time.

 

Scarlet flickers from the wood and ashes in the fireplace cast ghosts upon stained walls, the firelight catching in her golden hair as Baylon gently ran his fingers through it.

 

He did not miss the irony that her gold medals, which he'd cajoled her relentlessly about to try and convince her to show him them, caught the light in the same way. He wanted her to bring them along tomorrow for the _TIME_ magazine cover shoot. She's been reluctant so far, but Baylon is fairly sure he can convince her before they leave the house.

 

He can't remember ever feeling so peaceful.

 

*

 

When he had first started working with Sandra three years ago, there were concerns that someone might be tempted to hurt her for daring to speak out. There's nothing so dangerous as an opinionated woman with a gun. They thought they'd have to face down an army in the form of any angry mob.

 

But it never eventuated.

 

They all relaxed.

 

The next Olympics are drawing closer, and Sandra is gearing up to compete.

 

And now all the controversy is focused on Andrei Vasiliev, the Soviet defector who will swim for the US in Seoul. He is being a little too honest about life in the USSR for either the Soviets' or the Americans' liking, it would appear.

 

"I have to get a new bullet-proof vest for the Games," Sandra tells him. "The old measurements won't fit."

 

Baylon is confused.

 

Then, he sees she has rested her palm on her belly. She is smiling at him.

 

He picks her up and spins her around in a moment of complete joy.

 

They go the Olympic headquarters for Sandra's fitting. At least a third of the other athletes are there, and Sandra and Baylon exchange pleasantries.

 

Vasiliev catches Baylon's eye and strolls over to say hello. He looks relaxed, at ease.

 

But Baylon can feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

 

"Andrei! Andrei!"

 

Vasiliev turns to the source of the noise, and his eyes widen.

 

Baylon knows that he has only moments.

 

Vasiliev jumps just as the gun goes off.

 

Baylon rushes at Sandra, knocking her to the ground, shielding her body with his own.

 

There is a warm spread across his belly. _Blood_ , he realises. _His blood._ He is bleeding.

 

The pain is faint at first, and then turns into a bright spot of agony.

 

He looks up. She is crying, holding his face, calling him a stupid son of a bitch and asking why he'd go and do a stupid thing like that for and oh please don't die and help isn't far away now and I love you and I need you.

 

"This wasn't even our fight," she cries.

 

He smiles at her. Touches her face. His fingertips are wet from her tears.

 

Around him, things seem to be moving slowly. He's fairly sure his mind is shutting down, that his body is dying. But he doesn't mind. She's safe, and she's here with him, holding him in her arms.

 

It hurts.

 

But he would do it all again, a million times over, just to save her.


	3. The third time around: Titan, 2104

 

For the first few days here, sitting in this nice white room, Brooke drifted between dozing and wakefulness. Still dazed from all the painkillers, she could do little else. But she’d been told she’d been on the front for months and months. Even thinking about it made her tired. She was more than happy to admit (at least to herself) that she was grateful for the rest.

 

Eventually, the haze began to clear. She was able to stay awake for longer and longer. When she did sleep, she had deeply unsettling, frightening dreams, full of images of gunfire and dust and the feeling of dread that comes from being so overwhelmingly outnumbered and outgunned that you know you have no hope in hell of getting out of this alive...

 

So she stays awake as long as she can.

 

She scopes out her surroundings, hoping for some form of entertaining distraction. She is wearing a large grey t-shirt, the front of which is emblazoned with bright colours and the words STAR WARS. The nurse tells her it is a series of films and brings Brooke the 3D holo-renderings of them. Brooke watches them over and over, although she doesn’t realise she is sleeping through large swathes of it. So each viewing brings something fresh.

 

One day, as the sun sets outside the large window across from her bed, another patient is wheeled into the room on a gurney. A man with pale blonde hair that stood out strangely against the stark white of the bandages wrapped generously around his head. She had no idea how long he’d been here; he was out cold, and clearly recovering from a serious injury. She could see he was relatively tall and had probably been perfectly healthy and well-built before all this.

 

She wondered what happened to him. What brought him here.

 

Later, when the nurses came to turn him, she noticed he possessed the kind of distressingly handsome features usually reserved for football heroes and film stars. She noticed that before she either the dark bruising on his face, or the dark shadow of stubble. She should have known, just from that, that he meant trouble.

 

But then, her ability to sniff out trouble has always been acute. 

 

Not that she can remember that.

She can’t remember much of anything at all, which frustrates her.

 

Brooke studies her own face in the mirror. The dark curls, the blue eyes, the full mouth. There is a scar down the right side of her face that she knows is fresh.

 

She doesn't recognise the woman staring back at her.

 

Time passes. It could have been days later, but then, it could have been _weeks_. Or even months.

 

She watches her movies. Over and over. And she watches him breathe. 

 

Her eyes keep drifting to him, drawn like a moth to a flame.

 

People come to see her: two middle-aged people Brooke has been told are her parents; two young teenage girls who have her eyes and hair and smile who she knows, deep in her bones, are her blood. There are other people, too, but their visits frustrate her. She knows that she knows them. She _knows_ it. But these memories dance at the edge of her mind, taunting her, but flitting away like spooked animals at even the slightest touch.

 

She knows that people see him, too. He’s in a coma, the woman who says she is Brooke’s mother tells her.  He was injured fighting in the war. He saved lives in the process. She has tears in her eyes as she says it. 

 

Brooke wonders, not for the first time, why this woman cares so. Is she just soft-hearted? Or does she know this man?

 

Something stops her from asking. She senses that the question alone would hurt this woman.

 

So Brooke lets her curiosity sit. At least for now.

 

It hurts to look at him. But she can’t stop.

 

She knows - somehow - that she once had a good memory. Her doctor tells her that her injury is rare, but that it is not always incurable. That one day, she may be who she once was. That she can return to her original career, her original training, as a journalist. She told people’s stories.

 

But that was a lifetime before, of course, before the election, before the invasion, before the whole world changed for the worst in the blink of an eye.

 

The number of people here - maimed and broken - demonstrate that better than any headline ever could.

 

Brooke isn’t sure if her old job even exists any more.

 

She _can_ remember that she’s always found people interesting. There was pretty much always more going on underneath the masks that people put on to present to the world.

 

She looked at this man and couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been before… _this_.

 

She keeps looking at him. The bruises on his face heal, and the bandages wrapped around his head come off. She watches him more than she watches the films now. Not that she knows that.

 

Her dreams change. The two children are there, smiling, dressed in heavy winter clothing. Their backs are to Brooke as they stand on either side of a man Brooke somehow knows is their father. She can only see his back, but he is tall, well-muscled. A woolly beanie hides whatever hair and features he may have from her sight.

 

  
_"Brooke,"_ he says. _"Come and see the lake. It's frozen over."_

 

  
_"Who are you?"_ she asks, but her voice produces no sound.

 

She wakes, to find that she is facing  the man in the other bed.

 

Finally, her curiosity gets the better of her. She can stand it no longer. 

 

“Who is he?” she asks her doctor. “The man who shares my room?"

 

Her doctor looks at Brooke, her gaze sharp over the top of her glasses. 

 

There is a long silence. Brooke feels like a dissected lab animal with its innards spilled out in a petrie dish.

 

“His name is Sam,” the doctor says. 

 

“Sam,” Brooke repeats. “Hmm. I like that name."

 

Brooke isn’t sure what to make of the fact that the doctor writes that down.

 

*

 

When Sam wakes up, there is a big to-do.

 

There is a lot of noise from outside the door and Brooke wonders if the cause of the racket are the people she used to be: journalists.

 

“Would you like to see him?"

 

Brooke finds herself nodding. There is a lump in her chest and tears in her eyes.

 

She doesn’t know why.

 

The nurses help Brooke into a wheelchair and wheel her over to his bedside.

 

His eyes are big and blue, like the sky. He is beautiful in a way that Brooke knows few people in real life are.

 

“Hello,” she says.

 

He smiles at her, and her stomach flutters. It’s a strange feeling.

 

She feels almost like she’s falling.

 

*

 

Brooke and Sam go to physical rehab together. They sit in the recovery lounge with the other patients. In their shared room, he watches the holofilms with her.

 

Patients and staff alike fawn over him, and gossip among each other about how handsome he is.

 

Sam is quiet, so quiet that some people at the hospital have wondered if he can’t speak English, or that he’s deaf or mute, or that the bullet that felled him took off his tongue or something.

 

At first, Brooke couldn’t help but wonder about Sam, too. But when people speak to him, he can clearly comprehend what they are saying. There is a spark of sharp intelligence and dry wit in those eyes.

 

And she has heard him speak, although she can't remember when, which irritates her.

 

"Your short-term memory will take some time to recuperate," the doctor says when Brooke tells her this, still looking at Brooke with that laser focus from over the top of her glasses.

 

So Brooke lets the women have their gossip about Sam.

 

She knows better.

 

That night, she dreams of horses, and of the freedom of riding them across the vast expanse of the plains. Her mare's hoof-beats pound the soil in tandem with his gelding's. She turns her head, to smile at him.

 

But she cannot see his face.

 

*

 

Her doctor asks Brooke if she wants any new movies to watch.

 

"Brooke's always loved movies," her mother says. "Even as a little girl, before all the old, classic pictures were converted to holofilm, she'd very happily watch their flat, two-dimensional images, totally enraptured."

 

Brooke nods.

 

Then she surprises herself.

 

"Do we have any home movies? Of me? From...before?"

 

Her mother looks at her. Her eyes are moist. Then, she looks at Brooke's doctor.

 

She nods.

 

"Yes," her mother says, carefully, Brooke thinks. "What would you like to see?"

 

"Do we have important events from my life?"

 

Her mother looks from her to the doctor and back again.

 

"It may help her recovery," Brooke's doctor says quietly. "Even just a few short moments of film."

 

"All right," her mother nods.

 

When Sam goes out for rehab, Brooke stays in the room: she is to watch the movies her mother has brought for her.

 

"We've put a little something together," her mother says. "Just some moments we know you left you feeling happy and proud."

 

Brooke can see a woman who looks just like her reflection, although a little younger. She is walking across a stage in a mortarboard and gown, shaking hands with an important-looking middle-aged woman as she collects a red folder emblazoned with a gold hallmark. Deep inside, Brooke knows it must be a university degree.

 

The picture changes, and she is in a beautiful dress, walking across the grass toward a flowered canopy. There is a tall man in a pale suit standing under the arch, waiting for her. He has pale hair and a darker beard and as she draws near, he reaches out to her with his left hand and she takes his hand in her own.

 

The Brooke on the holoscreen looks up and smiles at him.

 

He smiles in return.

 

Brooke's breath catches in her throat.

 

It is Sam.

 

Really, she knows she shouldn't be surprised. All the clues were there.

 

That doesn't stop her from dashing to the bathroom. She heaves and heaves until there's nothing left to bring up.

 

*

 

Brooke's mother helps her back into bed. She says they can watch the other movies another time.

 

Brooke just nods. She has no words. She knows she had more than enough of them, once. Before the world became fuzzy and grey.

 

She sleeps.

 

She dreams.

 

It's hot and frightening and deeply unsettling. People are screaming. She hears the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire and the sonic boom of shells dropping.

 

Around her is nothing but misery and dust and flies. She knows they are overwhelmingly outnumbered and outgunned and they have no hope in hell of getting out of this alive...

 

But she also knows he is there, with her.

 

There is an explosion to her left, shockingly close. 

 

A heavy weight lands on her back, rolling her out of the way.

 

"Brooke!" he shouts over the din. "Are you all right?"

 

"You...you're here..."

 

She looks up at him.

 

He smiles at her, his blue eyes alight.

 

"Well, I can’t leave you with your ass uncovered,” Sam grunts. “You’d be dead in three minutes."

 

She wakes with a gasp.

 

*

 

Across from her, Sam is awake.

 

"Sorry, I woke you, didn't I?" she rasps.

 

"Are you all right?" he asks her, his voice scratchy.

 

Stunned, she just nods. 

 

Sam smiles, his blue eyes alight.

 

And she remembers.


End file.
